Antique Model Planes Take Flight From Ashes | Community

Joyce Casey is shown with the restored planes. (Al Lohman/The Patriot, Submitted Photos)

One of the charred planes is pictured. (Al Lohman/The Patriot, Submitted Photos)

George Catlin is pictured with a TWA plane in 1934. (Al Lohman/The Patriot, Submitted Photos)

Joyce Casey is shown with the restored planes. (Al Lohman/The Patriot, Submitted Photos)

One of the charred planes is pictured. (Al Lohman/The Patriot, Submitted Photos)

George Catlin is pictured with a TWA plane in 1934. (Al Lohman/The Patriot, Submitted Photos)

One man’s passion from long ago has taken flight again years later through his Waconia daughter and a craftsman from St. Bonifacius.

George Catlin, born in 1915, had an obsession with airplanes, says the daughter Joyce Catlin Casey.

As a young man growing up in Minneapolis, he would watch planes take off from World Chamberlain Field, the air field established in 1920 that later became the site of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Starting in the 1930s he hand-built several model airplanes using Popular Mechanics magazines as his guide. The planes, crafted from wood, were of all sizes with intricate details – struts, propellors, instrument panels, doors that opened and closed, even an electrified model that earned him a ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair.

Catlin joined the service in 1941 just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor where he served as an electrician’s mate aboard a Navy destroyer escort. He married just before he left, according to Casey who is the family historian. Catlin returned from World War II in 1945, took a job with Smith Welding and began to raise a family.

Meanwhile, his planes – some 15 in all – remained in hangar, a cabinet in his garage.

Catlin’s life ended tragically just a few years later on May 23, 1953, in a garage explosion triggered by a welding torch. A next-door neighbor died with him, says Casey, who was just two years old at the time of her father’s death. The surviving widows Bernice Catlin and Agnes Carlson remained close friends for years raising seven children between them, Casey marvels now.

Casey’s mother died in 1983 and her husband’s planes which survived the explosion charred and dirty over the years were dispersed among the three surviving siblings. A box of plane parts too.

The planes basically sat in storage with them for many more years until Casey encountered an individual at church who offered take a look at the damaged and dirty model airplanes.

Chris Haertl of St. Boni has a degree in aviation mechanics and has been building model planes since he was five. He also works on real airplanes and is also a boat builder, although his current profession is working with small medical devices, now with ProMed Molded Products out of Plymouth, Minn.

After inspection of Casey’s deceased father’s damaged planes, Haertl began to restore them as much as possible to their original design.

“Knowing they were family heirlooms weighed heavily on my decision to take this on,” he said.

In some cases, the work involved patching parts together; other planes required a rebuild from the ground up. When sanding the charred wood, Haertl said “you could still smell the fire.”

The most difficult part, he said, was the wheels which had originally been made from washers and sheet metal. In a few instances, Haertl had to resort to modern airplane model wheels available today. And he expects George Catlin would have appreciated the epoxies and fillers that model enthusiasts have access to now.

Haertl completed the work over five years. He doesn’t have an account of how many hours he put in on the project over the years, but the last airplane was restored just over a month ago.

Casey is more than appreciative.

Her dad kept a photo album of his planes and Casey has created her own album of his photos along with pictures of the restored planes. The book and the planes are legacy to her father and have been shared with other family members including more than dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Now Casey is exploring opportunities for others to see the planes too, possibly at an historical society or air museum. The planes finally got restored and maybe someday soon that vision will take off.

Fun fact: Joyce Casey’s father George Catlin is related to and named after the American adventurer, lawyer, painter and author who traveled the Old West in the 1830s and wrote about and painted portraits that depicted the lives of the Plains Indians.

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